Why transparency is the foundation of TRUST in your organization
Trust is a central part of our ability to survive in complex, high-growth environments. When trust is high, teams can overcome just about any obstacle. When trust is low, the ability to get things done in any meaningful way goes out the window.
As The Great Resignation becomes The Great Reshuffle, organizations need to know their leadership and employees have a high level of trust across the board. There’s still over a million Americans missing from the workforce—and that number hasn’t fallen significantly in months.
According to Microsoft’s New Future of Work Report, interpersonal trust is key to successful virtual and hybrid teams—not just those in an office. Remote and hybrid teams need to develop methods for establishing and maintaining trust.
What happens when you hire new staff? They’re going to need to trust and trust quickly; so what comes first? Providing a structure for team transparency allows trust to happen and stay the course.
Regulating and understanding TRUST
Creating trust in an organization can be as simple as TRUST:
Transparency
Relationship
Understanding
Shared Success
Test Assumptions
When we use this model as a roadmap, we can be aware of our mindset, intentions and impact. This puts us in our prefrontal cortex where we’re best suited to make the decisions and connections that move our companies forward.
Transparency matters more than ever
Transparency in an organization really means quelling threats and fears that may arise, from the get-go.
Transparency also requires the intention of a safe environment. People respect honesty over perfection; by opening communication channels through transparency across the organization, you’ll have teams that are more efficient, creative, and at ease at work.
Sharing desired outcomes and any threats that may pop up along the way is a good example of transparency at play; for example, software company Atlassian has an all-hands meeting weekly that includes everyone from both their U.S. and teams located in other countries. Letting the team in on bigger goals and potential roadblocks aids in a transparent organization where people feel heard and valued.
Transparency in conversations leads to transformational discussion
The key in any conversation—whether that’s a one-on-one, face-to-face discussion or email or Teams message—is intention.
Before speaking, ask yourself: Who am I in this conversation? How am I approaching the other person?
An intentional conversation with intentional listening:
- Creates understanding and moves one from distrust to trust.
- Elevates our ability to see and understand when our connections with others are not as strong as they need to be in order to navigate through challenges or achieve goals
- Knowing this can speed up the time it takes to achieve goals; what would normally take months or years can now happen more rapidly
- Lays the groundwork for more successful and trusting relationships
Where can you be more transparent in your organization?
Stay tuned for the next in our Organizational Trust series, where we’ll dive deep into Relationship.